


Potential

by lazy_daze



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazy_daze/pseuds/lazy_daze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This can, I believe, best be described as a pre-slash vignette.  More a scene than a fic, it's basically Harry coming out to Eggsy with a healthy dash of UST. Hi new fandom!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potential

"Have you ever been married, Harry?"

"Hm?" asked Harry, idly swirling his whiskey. "Sorry?" 

Eggsy knew he'd heard and was stalling, which was unusual for Harry, which piqued Eggsy's interest immediately.

"Married. Or anything, like."

"Hmm, no, never married." Harry made an interesting shape with his mouth, like he was deciding how much information to parcel out. Eggsy was greedy for it, was always greedy for anything he could get about Harry, especially the murky fascination of his past, but there was also an uncharacteristic hesitation in Harry's tone. Eggsy leaned back into the couch, tried to look interested in an encouraging sort of way, without looking, like, _too_ interested, in case Harry felt pressured, or something. Or too aware how desperate Eggsy was for information on him, so he'd withhold it on purpose, either to be a shit or as leverage.

"There was - well. I suppose we may have been married," Harry said eventually, still twirling his glass between his long fingers. "We were young and stupid enough."

"Why didn't you, then?" said Eggsy, quietly. He was trying not to guess, but couldn't help it. Perhaps it was something tragic – a young love, on the verge of marriage, cut short by a dramatic death – it would make sense as to why Harry seemed sort of isolated, if he'd lost someone he'd loved, years ago. Maybe that was even his impetus for becoming a Kingsman – perhaps they'd been caught up in a heist or something by accident, and Harry had impressed the Kingsman agents so much one of them had proposed him as a candidate--

"We weren't allowed to. I still find it a little strange that it is possible, now – marriage seemed liked such an impossibility to us, something so far away it couldn't even be considered, or asked for."

Distracted by his angsty origin story fabrication, it took a few moments for Eggsy to parse what Harry was saying.

"Weren't allow--? You mean – oh my _god_."

"God, I fear, has very little to do with it. Don't look too terribly shocked, Eggsy. You're a modern gentleman. I thought your generation was supposed to be enlightened."

Eggsy bristled – at least, the part of him not still dealing with the revelation – as he always did at Harry's use of 'your generation'. He knew what Harry meant, but he hated it when Harry casually separated them like that. As if Eggsy was a whole different being just because he was a bit younger. There was more uniting them, as Kingsmen, as friends, as – whatever, than their age separating them. "I--" Eggsy stopped himself saying "I am enlightened!" like a twat, and shook his head. "Sorry, mate, just surprised. I ain't gonna be a dick about it, though. It's – like, it's cool."

"Thank you for your permission," said Harry, archly, sipping at his whiskey as Eggsy tried not to go a humiliated sort of pink. "I certainly need it after fifty-odd years of being this way."

"Nah," said Eggsy immediately, his brain latching on to the logical fallacy as a distraction. "Not that many, right, I mean, you weren't born a gay baby."

"Hmm," allowed Harry. "Not a fan of that 'born that way' rhetoric, then?" he asked, though he was smiling again, amused more than mocking.

Eggsy shrugged, a little part of him cackling at the cognitive dissonance of Lady Gaga song titles leaving the lips of one Harry Hart. "I dunno. Just know you ain't got no, like, flaming babies coming out, so."

"A fair point, perhaps." Harry glanced at Eggsy. "And though I expected nothing less, I am relieved you are not—" he tilted his head slightly, sardonically. "'A dick' about it. No gentleman would be, but I have heard the things people yell in the street and spew on social media, even in these allegedly enlightened times, so."

Harry rarely left a sentence dangling, but Eggsy didn't point it out, and heard the 'thank you' Harry wanted to say but knew was inappropriate – who needed to be fucking thanked for being something approximating a decent human being?

"Yeah," he said, sort of nonsensically. "Well, it's like--" He shrugged. "Ain't anybody's business, unless they wanna fuck you, innit? So why get all bothered by who people you don’t even know wanna go to bed with, it's just nosy and rude, innit?"

He was babbling a bit, but. God. Harry was gay. Well, at least had a relationship with another man in the past – Eggsy wasn't gonna start interrogating Harry about, like, the ins and outs of his sexual identity. But he was - not. Not straight. Eggsy's heart thrummed faster than it should and an aimless excitable energy tingled in his little fingers.

"Well, quite," said Harry, blinking a bit. He'd licked his lips when Eggsy had said 'unless they wanna fuck you', which was just a tic Harry did occasionally, even more do if he was drinking something, so it meant nothing, but Eggsy's heart thumped in useless want, anyway. This should have been brilliant news, and maybe Eggsy's libido was jumping in joy, but god, fuck, it was terrible, too. It had felt safe, before, lusting over Harry. Kind of predictable – fit older man who'd pretty much rescued Eggsy's life from the bog, course he'd get a bit infatuated. It had almost been fun – except for when he'd thought Harry had been dead – and he'd just been sort of waiting to, like. Get over it. Hadn’t happened yet, but things faded, didn't they?

Now there was potential; now it didn't feel safe.

Though really, Eggsy had never been a fan of safe. Harry himself, Kingsman, the past year, was proof of that.

His tongue felt thick in his mouth, words forming and dying, wanting to say something - anything – mostly because he felt it was only fair, to reciprocate this trust. Harry had clearly specifically decided to tell him, to reveal a part of himself he must otherwise take medium care to keep secret, and it didn't feel – gentlemanly, it didn’t feel like respect, if Eggsy didn't give him that trust in return.

But partly because a thrilling sliver of him wanted to see if that realisation of potential flared in Harry's eyes, too.

"Y'ain't that special, anyway," he said, shifting casually in his chair. Harry's eyes darted over, tracked his movements. Harry did that a lot, and he was a Kingsman, an expert spy, he had to track everything, at all times. But. "These days, not that unusual, innit? Some people are just straight, right, and that's fine, but a lot of us, you know. Try new things."

Harry moved at 'a lot of us', but it was such a comfortable casual settling movement that it could have been a coincidence.

"I've been remiss in my knowledge of you, it seems," he said, and sounded annoyed. Eggsy thrilled warm and smug that Harry tried to know everything about him – wanted to. And pleased, rebelliously, that there was - were, still, parts of him that were new to Harry, that Harry didn't have all of him mapped out easy and known. Cause god knows Eggsy didn't have a fraction of knowledge of what made up Harry. "I wasn't aware you swung that way, or ever had."

"Hate that phrase. Not a fucking pendulum, am I now?" He shrugged. "Anyway, you know. A few times. Depends on the person." He dared himself to meet Harry's eyes.

The sun was setting outside the living room, and the shadows made it hard to read Harry's face, to get a proper look at his eyes. And try as he might, Eggsy still couldn't read Harry. He thought he could, sometimes, but he was half-convinced that was only when Harry decided to put the subtitles on for him. He needed to learn the language, and he was fucking trying.

Harry's fingers twitched on his glass. "Indeed."


End file.
